“Many are questioning the need for libraries to have digital collections, as access to information appears ubiquitous. With the answer to every question seemingly a ‘Google’ away, it is a common misconception that libraries and library staff are no longer needed. . . .

The provision of digital as well as physical collections provides not only what users need and demand, but also provides and supports equity of access.”

Technology is changing not only how people write, but also how they learn to write. These profound changes require teachers to reconsider their pedagogical practices in the teaching of writing. This books shares instructional approaches from experienced teacher educators in the areas of writing, teacher education, and technology.

Carey Leahy‘s insight:

Suggestions and examples for teachers at several stages of experience.

“For the last couple of years Vimeo has offered free music to download and re-use in your video projects. Now YouTube is offering the same thing through the YouTube Audio Library. This library is slightly different than the free music available when you use the YouTube slideshow creation tool. The music in the YouTube Audio Library is music that you can download to use in projects online and offline. You can search the library of music according to genre, mood, instrument, or duration. You can listen to the tracks before downloading them as MP3 files.”

A common goal of libraries has always been to support the interest and learning needs of their users. Once, libraries primarily achieved their goal within the confines of four walls and a finite ‘collection’ collated and accessed through a physical catalogue. Using established systems of organisation, libraries still aim to provide the service of connecting various available information resources with the particular needs of the individual people within their sphere. With time, the world has changed and technology advanced such that the amount of information and the modes of its existence have changed and increased significantly. Though there are still walls and physical resources, the ‘collection’ that patrons can now access goes far beyond one library space, to sites connected via digital technologies. The challenge libraries throughout this connected world now face – with its mass of information resources – is the need to develop and refine existing systems of information organisation to enable the integration of the new and emerging modes – in order to continue to support effective information access to meet their client’s needs

Ordered shelves!

These established systems of information organisation involve the classifying, labeling and arranging of the library’s resources in a logical manner such that staff and patrons can locate particular items via a descriptive catalogue or browse among the shelves. Over many years, the movement of information to new places influenced the need to establish a standard description so each discrete item could be identified throughout the world. Although a computer ‘catalogue’ had been used to describe and access the intellectual data of resources for many years, connections between libraries and other information agencies were still limited until developing digital technologies resulted in the expansion of the World Wide Web – where information resources can potentially be accessed throughout the ‘connected’ world. This has resulted in an abundance of information resources that needs to be filtered for quality, value and accessibility.

For information agencies to achieve their organizational objectives, there is also a necessity for them to consider any need to re-evaluate and reorganize their systems as they participate within an ever-changing global community. Many Australian school libraries (as an example of an information agency) have worked recently to identify resources (both physical and digital) that would particularly support educational staff implementing the new National Australian Curriculum (NAC). School librarians are ‘organizing’ these focused curriculum resources – often with additional identifying metadata – for ready access to support their schools’ needs. These systems can also provide useful reports about the collection and its usage. Librarians can then use this data when conducting audits to help inform future direction within the library with a view to maintaining currency and relevancy.

To participate in a connected global information environment, an information agency needs to have an understanding of the common rules and practices associated with organizing information – and a willingness to agree to them in principle is essential. This involves at least a minimum level of alignment with the standards practiced in the description of information – now moving towards Resource Description and Access (RDA), the participation in a standard recording format for exchanging metadata such as MARC (Machine-Readable Cataloguing) and a willingness to contribute in the cooperative exchange of metadata (Hider & Harvey, 2008 p21).

With such a plethora of information available to connected libraries it is important to fully understand why metadata standards are imperative. If the basis of describing an information resource is to expedite its retrieval as a useful item, a common ‘language’ is necessary to avoid wasting the searcher’s time and efforts. The description needs to have structures and patterns that will enable wide understanding and make items readily recognizable. This can be achieved by improving the quality and uniformity of the metadata produced. This metadata also needs to be produced ensuring its interoperability in an online environment. All these aspects ‘allow for economy in the search process’ (Hider & Harvey 2008, p12). A move to improve the universality of description throughout the connected world is underway with the current implementation of RDA.

Global connections from within a library space.

In an online environment information agencies are competing with the speed and quantity of information being sourced through Internet search engine tools such as Google. What differentiates a library metadata search from a ‘Google’ search is – quality. James Weinheimer (2011, p203) suggests that ‘quality means that some kind of standards are followed, and that someone using a product that follows those standards . . . can safely rely on it.’ Information resources with a description based on globally agreed standards could provide searchers with the basis on which to make clear choices to suit their needs. This being the primary objective of Information Agencies everywhere, it is essential for all libraries to universally persist with metadata standards implementation as part of the management of information resources.

While on my Work Placement at a P-12 college, I noticed that most ‘handout’ and booklet material had included some attribution to the creator. I decided to go back and have a closer look at Creative Commons and learn how to do that on my own work. So . . . I now have the symbols on the home page of my blog site and plan to use it on any future work I create. Will discuss this concept with colleagues at our face-to-face TL Network meeting this Thursday and add a similar widget to the TLsConnecting Blog.

Ideas connect and build . . .

Having gone into my ‘Dashboard’ to add a Creative Commons licence to my right sidebar (long overdue), I also noticed that the last 6 blog posts have been completed through my social book-marking connections. Namely – Scoopit and Pinterest. Both active and visually appealing places where I have RSS feeds finding me links based on topics I’ve chosen. Every other day I check the links that have been collected together for me and check out the ones I believe warrant closer inspection and then save some of the links and images to my own sites (boards and topics). Adding the link to my blog site was made easy earlier this year when Scoopit added a ‘pop-up’ that allowed me to send out a tweet about my find and/or place it directly onto my blog site. I like the idea – seems an efficient and effective way of saving and sharing the things I’ve found. What these links do lack (since they are placed quickly) is the categorisation and tagging I usually give to my posts. I need to check in and do that ‘little thing’ – to include them in my ‘searching system’ – as an item within my collection, each is desperately in need of ‘description’ – so I can later find them through their access points! So, the concepts I’m learning in ETL505 I am able to apply to my own digital collection. Wow, I feel like I am bringing it all together?!*